FloydA:BumpInTheNight: Somacandra: FloydA: The weird thing for me is the students who snap pictures of the slides I show, because I also post the slideshows online

I post slideshows online in Blackboard, but with no voiceover. Precisely so that students don't try to substitute them for coming to class.

What's the difference between the slideshow + voice over vs being in the class watching you talk and clicking next on the controller?

If you're watching the slide show and voice over at home and you raise your hand to ask a question, I'm not coming to your house to answer it.

No lecture can possibly include all of the information that the professor knows. If you want to actually benefit from the class, the best way to do it is to ask the prof for further information when things aren't clear, or ask me to expand upon a topic that interests you. I don't know what you already know and don't know- my lectures are based on an estimate of what I expect most students know, but I am aware that each student is different. I teach the way that worked best for me when I was a student, but I'm not you. If the way that works best for you is different from the way that works best for me, come to class and ask questions, and I'll adjust my teaching style to accommodate you. I'm good at that.

But if you sit at home and just look at the slides and listen to the audio and then complain that I didn't teach in a way that accommodates your preferred learning style, well, there isn't much I can do about it. Tell me how you learn best, and I will teach the material in a way that is most effective in helping you understand it. But if you expect me to just "guess" how you learn, well, I already did- I guessed "slides and audio." If you want more than that, I recommend coming to class and asking me for it; I'll be glad to oblige. See you there.

Loren:Add to this that he had three TAs for the class. One was good, one was acceptable and one was awful. He divided us up into three basically equal groups but it was based on something only we knew (I forget what now, perhaps where we were sitting). Thus basically everyone who got the awful one switched to the good one, we were distributed about 90/30/0. He reassigned us based on a criteria he knew--you turn your homework in to the right TA or you get no credit. Idiot--didn't how we behaved tell you there was a problem?

So, you decided it was you right to punish the best TA by making him do twice as much work as he was assigned? (I'll assume you meant 70/30/0.)

I prefer to teach early in the morning just so students don't transfer into my class. Extra grading is annoying.

Loren:There are some. I once took a summer session 5-credit class. The teacher spent the entire first class period trying to convince us to drop as he didn't believe it could be taught in the summer session. He eventually did get me to drop because of his grading policy. At that point I had the fourth highest grade (of 120 students) in the class and yet I was one point from an F--the problem was his homework grading. Homework counted 0% for your final score except if your homework score was below 50% you failed. The homework wasn't all that hard except it was taken directly out of the book (so there was an answer key out there) and so he required us to show work--and it was much harder and more time consuming to figure out how to come up with enough work to show to make him happy. I simply didn't have enough time in the day to deal with this. (I had a long bus commute.)

Add to this that he had three TAs for the class. One was good, one was acceptable and one was awful. He divided us up into three basically equal groups but it was based on something only we knew (I forget what now, perhaps where we were sitting). Thus basically everyone who got the awful one switched to the good one, we were distributed about 90/30/0. He reassigned us based on a criteria he knew--you turn your homework in to the right TA or you get no credit. Idiot--didn't how we behaved tell you there was a problem?

Wow, now that's some of the worst teaching I've seen in college.

The worst from my experience I can think of involved a Chinese TA teaching a freshman-level math class.

On the first day of class, he hands out the syllabus, and without further introduction or comment, about 2 or 3 minutes into the first class he gets up on the blackboard and starts putting up notes and example problems. He's throwing them up lightning fast. We're struggling to copy it all down, amazed at his high rate he was presenting information and a little intimidated. His English was also heavily accented.

When he finishes filling the blackboards about 10 minutes later, he turns around and in thickly accented English says "Any Questions?"

More than a dozen hands go up. . .and he responds with "Good!" as he goes over and starts erasing his old notes and starts putting more up, ignoring the students wanting clarification. About 15 minutes later, literally halfway into the class he's filled the blackboards a second time. Everyone in the class has been frantically copying notes, and filled more than one page by this time. Now he turns around and goes "Do you understand?" in the same accented speech.

"No!" call out two dozen voices. He pauses for a moment and goes "Good!". . .and starts throwing up more notes. Halfway into the first class of the semester and we all had cramps in our hands from the constant writing to copy down the notes and example problems he was throwing up. He was mumbling explanations in what I think was supposed to be English the whole time, but nobody could make it out, his only way of communicating to us was in those written notes.

This entire mockery played out for the rest of the class, and for every future class like this that semester. I was taking Japanese. My classmates saw my textbook and asked if I could talk to him, since he didn't understand English. I had to sadly point out that Japanese and Chinese are quite different and mutually totally incomprehensible as spoken languages.

Exams for that class were standardized by the University, since it was a major common class that most students needed to graduate. I got about a 40%. Of the 10 problems on there, 2 were for things that in his huge mess of notes he didn't even cover, and 2 were for things he only briefly touched upon. He had us do vast amounts of work on things that weren't on the test. Nobody in the class passed. Not a soul.

I dropped the class after that exam. Most of the class did, except for people who would be thrown out of the dorms for dropping below full-time status.

Girion47:Oh you mean those things that usually profit the professor since his name is on them and are never referenced in class and written in a way that interpretation on your own is nigh-impossible?

I think the textbook biz is a huge racket so you're preaching to the choir with some of what you say. However, I don't think I've ever had a class where the prof was an author, so never hit that scenario. I could actually theoretically see myself writing enough that I could put it out there as a book, but if I do so it will at least be freely available to my students -- I don't like the conflict of interest. [For anyone who missed, I'm not a prof, but aspiring to be.] Somewhat likely, it'd just be some Creative Commons work. Textbook authors don't actually get all that much from them anyway; it's mostly the publishers. (The class I've taught a couple times has had notes written by previous profs that I hijacked and modified.)

But that said... most classes I've taken, the textbook has been at least relevant. It's more a matter of whether the class makes it redundant or not, so whether I felt the need to actually go look at it. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. (Incidentally, making the book relevant to the course I'd guess is one of the main reasons that people write textbooks.)

I teach online via webcam, so all of my lectures are recorded--both video and audio. I don't find that it makes me any more self-conscious than lecturing in a classroom. Students can attend, so they can ask questions in real-time, but students who aren't able to attend can listen to the recording later. I'm not sure how many of them do, but considering how often I see my examples pop up in their papers, I imagine it's quite a few. I still manage to make a lot of jokes and talk about a lot of controversial stuff (I teach psychology) without issue.

I once took a writing class where the teacher insisted we use typewriters instead of word processors. She refused to accept anything from a dot matrix printer (even a 24 pin with good print). So I downloaded a typewriter font and she was perfectly happy thinking it came from a typewriter. Stupid.

Then I took a word processing class where the teacher insisted on using only keyboard commands and not using the mouse. I turned on the menu's (20 years ago) and used the mouse and was told to turn off the menu's and not use the mouse. I don't think she knew how to use the mouse.

Another college professor insisted on teaching incorrect information about computer processor specifications. You simply couldn't get him to understand the real specifications. A friend of mine insisted on writing down the correct answers and he failed the test. I just wrote what the teacher wanted and moved on.

Lesson was that many college professors are afraid of technology, don't understand it, don't want to understand it, and won't accept it because they have tenure and are only a few years from retirement so what do they care?

As someone relatively close to all of this, my understanding of the situation:

Copyright law is intended to protect people's creative expression. A professor (or their employing institution) owns the copyright to their lectures, because making lectures involves a lot of choices about how to present and teach the material. The lecture is that person's expression of the facts, and is protected. A transcript, recording, or note-taking of that lecture are all derivative works of that lecture (i.e. they do not involve creative expression on the part of the student, they are merely reproductions) and thus the professor has a copyright on those things as well. The students can use their own personal notes/recordings for their own edification under the doctrine of fair use, but could run into problems if they distribute those notes- particularly if they profit from the distribution or if they were to substantially effect the merchantability of the professor's lectures. In other words- you can't sell the professor's work for your own profit and you can't distribute it so freely that people could just get your notes and not have to take the class.

Realistically, I don't think most people around here are that concerned about their copyright. For one, at this institution, the university owns the rights to most things you produce (copyright or patent) if the university equipment is necessary or if you do it on university time. The flip side to that is then the university is responsible for monetizing anything they have the rights to, and the originators get %47 of the return for doing nothing. (That is, if you write a textbook or patent an invention, the university is responsible for making money on those things and protecting your copyrights/patents. They own the rights, but they're obligated to pay you a substantial portion of what they make on it.) All in all, not a terribly bad deal when you consider the cost of monetizing a good idea involves lots of publishers, printers, manufacturers, lawyers, and a host of other costs.

Every academic publication I've ever seen (academic conferences, journals, etc.) require you to assign the copyright to the publication for a variety of reasons. There has been some backlash against this recently, so I know a few journals that will allow you to keep your copyright but charge pretty steep publication fees instead. Even if you retain the copyright, they require that you give them the right to redistribute, so the only real reason to do this would be if you want your work to always be available without cost, rather than requiring a subscription. This is pretty moot to me, as these publications almost always allow you to reserve the right to self-publish on your personal website.

With respect to lecture material, I do know a few people who put copyright notices and DO NOT DISTRIBUTE on class materials and lecture slides. Sometimes this is done out of necessity, such as when you're using someone else's material yourself you probably don't have the permission to re-distribute.

Frankly, a lot of this really depends on the situation. If I'm teaching 101-level stuff that has a dozen (or more) textbooks that cover the material I don't really care if you video tape and broadcast it over the world. Once you get into the advanced topics (graduate classes particularly) it's very possible that there are zero textbooks written on the subject material, and it's very possible that the professor is one of the handful of people in the world that would be able to write one. In that kind of situation, that professor's interpretation of the material is an incredibly rare and valuable resource (forming one basis of their employability, in fact), and I would be very reluctant to give someone unrestricted permission to copy and redistribute that material. There are a lot of almost-bright-enough-but-not-quite PhD's who would love to write a book on a topic but just aren't up to par- and it'd be very tempting to go online and get a few recordings of the preeminent scholars' classes, throw them through a grinder and make some money on whatever comes out the other side.

I'm far less concerned about undergrads and graduate students making copies for their own use. I don't allow laptops in the classroom, however, as they're invariably far more distracting to everyone else than they are useful to the people using them.

NetOwl:Loren: Add to this that he had three TAs for the class. One was good, one was acceptable and one was awful. He divided us up into three basically equal groups but it was based on something only we knew (I forget what now, perhaps where we were sitting). Thus basically everyone who got the awful one switched to the good one, we were distributed about 90/30/0. He reassigned us based on a criteria he knew--you turn your homework in to the right TA or you get no credit. Idiot--didn't how we behaved tell you there was a problem?

So, you decided it was you right to punish the best TA by making him do twice as much work as he was assigned? (I'll assume you meant 70/30/0.)

I prefer to teach early in the morning just so students don't transfer into my class. Extra grading is annoying.

We weren't punishing the best TA, we were simply trying to get someone we could understand. And 90/30/0 was right--that was the number of students, not percentages.

Silverstaff:Wow, now that's some of the worst teaching I've seen in college.

I saw worse.

The worst from my experience I can think of involved a Chinese TA teaching a freshman-level math class.

On the first day of class, he hands out the syllabus, and without further introduction or comment, about 2 or 3 minutes into the first class he gets up on the blackboard and starts putting up notes and example problems. He's throwing them up lightning fast. We're struggling to copy it all down, amazed at his high rate he was presenting information and a little intimidated. His English was also heavily accented.

When he finishes filling the blackboards about 10 minutes later, he turns around and in thickly accented English says "Any Questions?"

More than a dozen hands go up. . .and he responds with "Good!" as he goes over and starts erasing his old notes and starts putting more up, ignoring the students wanting clarification. About 15 minutes later, literally halfway into the class he's filled the blackboards a second time. Everyone in the class has been frantically copying notes, and filled more than one page by this time. Now he turns around and goes "Do you understand?" in the same accented speech.

My experience with accented Chinese teachers was a little different: The guy's accent & grammar was so bad that I often couldn't understand him in realtime--I could either figure out what the last sentence meant or listen to the current one, I couldn't do both. (Note: At the time I was involved with a Chinese woman so new to English that most meaningful communication involved the use of the dictionary.)

Not being able to understand him wasn't actually that important as he had almost nothing worth saying anyway. This was a 400-level class. His lecture was so confusing that he got asked a very elementary question--anyone who had passed a 100-level course should have been able to answer it. He rambled back to his lecture without ever actually answering the question. The question was repeated, same result. The question came once again, this time another student gave a reasonably good one word answer. I can't recall hearing another question all semester.

The second hardest part of the class was remembering what wrong answers to put down, the hardest part was when the next question was to defend your answer to the previous question that needed a wrong answer. Once I got completely stumped by one of those proof questions and so I resorted to putting down the correct answer along with an example of an actual system that worked like I said. (An analogy as the actual details are too technical: Q: Do lawn mowers require gasoline engines? (He expects a yes.) A: No. Q: Why? A: Sears sells a lawn mower model XXX with an electric engine.) Of course I didn't get credit.

davemchine:I once took a writing class where the teacher insisted we use typewriters instead of word processors. She refused to accept anything from a dot matrix printer (even a 24 pin with good print). So I downloaded a typewriter font and she was perfectly happy thinking it came from a typewriter. Stupid.

I had multiple teachers that said no printers--they didn't like 9-pin dot matrix. None of them ever realized my "typewritten" stuff was actually coming off a daisy wheel printer.

Then I took a word processing class where the teacher insisted on using only keyboard commands and not using the mouse. I turned on the menu's (20 years ago) and used the mouse and was told to turn off the menu's and not use the mouse. I don't think she knew how to use the mouse.

If you're doing it a lot the keyboard commands very often are faster to use once you've learned them.

Lesson was that many college professors are afraid of technology, don't understand it, don't want to understand it, and won't accept it because they have tenure and are only a few years from retirement so what do they care?

Yup--I was a lab assistant in college. Once we ran a bunch of teachers through the computer literacy class--what a joke! The only group that ever did worse was the hispanic outreach program that was bringing in a bunch of students who had no business inside a college classroom.

To compound it the teachers absolutely wouldn't accept that us students knew more about the subject matter than they did. Never mind that everyone on duty then knew far more than the actual job requirements and had enough experience doing it that we could usually tell you exactly what had been done wrong to get the bad output--in that regard we were far ahead of the teacher. He knew the stuff but lacked the experience in the trenches to diagnose the problem without seeing them do it. The teacher quickly caught on to the fact that our answers were right despite our apparent lack of data--he would go to someone who needed help, listen to our 10-second description of the problem and then explain it, then run off to the next person needing help. Despite this not a one of them would respond to us at all, it was like we didn't exist.

davemchine:Then I took a word processing class where the teacher insisted on using only keyboard commands and not using the mouse. I turned on the menu's (20 years ago) and used the mouse and was told to turn off the menu's and not use the mouse. I don't think she knew how to use the mouse.

If part of your class was typing as well as general word processing, it very well may have been intentional. Keyboard commands are orders of magnitude faster than mouse commands, so if you're doing a job that requires a lot of complex typing (i.e. not just data entry or diction) it really pays off to know your text editor's keyboard functions.

Fubini:A transcript, recording, or note-taking of that lecture are all derivative works of that lecture (i.e. they do not involve creative expression on the part of the student, they are merely reproductions) and thus the professor has a copyright on those things as well.

So I only have a GED in law, but two points: I don't think that a lack of creative expression is relevant to the derivative works issue -- a creative derivative work is still derivative. Second, AFAIK a copyright holder doesn't get copyrights of derivative works -- they can just restrict such derivative work creation/distribution. The author of a creative derivative work will still own the copyright to that work, but just won't be able to do anything with it without permission until the copyright on the original expires.

Fubini:If part of your class was typing as well as general word processing, it very well may have been intentional. Keyboard commands are orders of magnitude faster than mouse commands, so if you're doing a job that requires a lot of complex typing (i.e. not just data entry or diction) it really pays off to know your text editor's keyboard functions.

So before getting into this, to establish my keyboarding credentials, I do most of my work in Emacs, on Linux, with a tiling window manager that doesn't even show me window borders. :-)

With that out of the way: (1) What you say is only somewhat true. There's something a little like Amdahl's law that applies: if you only use a function once or twice month or something like that, the speedup you can get my memorizing the keyboard shortcut is basically nil. You'll probably spend more time memorizing it than you'll save by using it, especially because it's exactly the "I use this once a month" type of things that are the hardest to remember. (2) Having the menus around makes it possible and easy to explore around a bit to see what sorts of things the software can do. It also provides one of the best ways of learning what the shortcut keys are in the first place. (3) I really feel that it's possibly not the instructor's business. Maybe it would be for a couple weeks of "today you learn keyboard use" classes, but beyond that, the teacher's job is to give you tools.

tiamet4:Furthermore, I understand the intellectual property issue but many of you provide frankly awful notes if the assumption is that we are going to be actively listening and learning during your lecture. I've gotten a BS and a medical degree and yearly I take lectures for CE and I would say a good 65% of you provide notes that are a sparse outline of what you intend to cover and we are somehow expected to scramble to write down in detail what you say off the cuff in the margins of what you provided while somehow absorbing what is being said.

If you think a lecture is a method of acquiring information then either you or your teachers have got something very wrong.

proteus_b:kriegfusion: Count me in as one of the people who doesn't listen to the instructor when im writing down notes. OK Teacher, here's how it works with me: I either write, or listen. I don't do both, and if I try, I do poorly at both. The newer teachers I work with in community college are pretty cool. One of the older ones, and most older ones i've had the pleasure of studying under, screw this up. Especially if they suddenly discovered Powerpoint, and feel like skipping through 15 frames in about 15 minutes. Theres no way I can write all that down, let alone actually listen to what the fark you're actually saying.

If you demand I write notes, then just so you know, bub, I am not even attempting to listen to the lecture. I am writing notes. You can and should be replaced with a pink flamingo, for all the good you are doing as a teacher. Don't be such a luddite, and let people record if they want to. If they fail, it's on them.

The whiz-bang pace of those community college lectures really does get to some people...Perhaps one of the skills you would learn (if you'd drop the confrontational attitude) is how to process information in real time. You might figure out how to discern what is worth writing down, and what isn't, and then you would have time to both listen and annotate the lectures. It would probably make you better at learning in general, in whichever field you might apply yourself...

Light jab about community college speed aside, I think this may very well be true. My writing comes across sometimes as confrontational, but I simply wish to get to the crux of the matter quickly and normally don't flower the language, initially at first. I am actually eager to hear alternate viewpoints, such as yours.I think I process information in real time fairly well, however writing and listening at the same time is what gets me, and as someone said earlier, i've gotten into trouble by not taking notes. I've failed classes where I didn't listen to the lecture, and i've failed when I didn't read. Its hard to find the middle ground, because each teacher leans more on lecture or books, and it alternates teacher to teacher.Another part is simply, I hate the fact that we have to go to school to get a degree to get a job. I naturally LOVE learning. I hate that its even graded the way it is. I'd rather meet with several professors and discuss what i've learned at the end of the semester, and let them pass/fail me. Ive failed tests because my memory is crap, but I understood the material very well. I've asked people who've gotten A's on the test about the particular chapters, subjects, and wanted to go into detail to make conversation, but i've gotten deer in headlights looks from them; I honestly got way more out of it than they did.I simply feel that nearly everything is worth writing down, because I find teachers, and lectures, immensely interesting. I simply feel robbed and cheated when I have to write so much, and can't enjoy the lecturer, I guess is what it comes down to.I will focus on your suggestion tomorrow and see what comes of it. Thank you P.

If you have an IEP with an accommodation to use a smart phone or a recording device in school because of ADD or another learning disability, federal laws and the ADA (in college) allow you to do this. It's not negotiable, and if they don't comply, it's grounds for a lawsuit and an injunction.

orbister:tiamet4: Furthermore, I understand the intellectual property issue but many of you provide frankly awful notes if the assumption is that we are going to be actively listening and learning during your lecture. I've gotten a BS and a medical degree and yearly I take lectures for CE and I would say a good 65% of you provide notes that are a sparse outline of what you intend to cover and we are somehow expected to scramble to write down in detail what you say off the cuff in the margins of what you provided while somehow absorbing what is being said.

If you think a lecture is a method of acquiring information then either you or your teachers have got something very wrong.

Then why have them? I'd much rather stay in bed if we've been doing it wrong all these years.

kriegfusion:proteus_b: kriegfusion: Count me in as one of the people who doesn't listen to the instructor when im writing down notes. OK Teacher, here's how it works with me: I either write, or listen. I don't do both, and if I try, I do poorly at both. The newer teachers I work with in community college are pretty cool. One of the older ones, and most older ones i've had the pleasure of studying under, screw this up. Especially if they suddenly discovered Powerpoint, and feel like skipping through 15 frames in about 15 minutes. Theres no way I can write all that down, let alone actually listen to what the fark you're actually saying.

If you demand I write notes, then just so you know, bub, I am not even attempting to listen to the lecture. I am writing notes. You can and should be replaced with a pink flamingo, for all the good you are doing as a teacher. Don't be such a luddite, and let people record if they want to. If they fail, it's on them.

The whiz-bang pace of those community college lectures really does get to some people...Perhaps one of the skills you would learn (if you'd drop the confrontational attitude) is how to process information in real time. You might figure out how to discern what is worth writing down, and what isn't, and then you would have time to both listen and annotate the lectures. It would probably make you better at learning in general, in whichever field you might apply yourself...

Light jab about community college speed aside, I think this may very well be true. My writing comes across sometimes as confrontational, but I simply wish to get to the crux of the matter quickly and normally don't flower the language, initially at first. I am actually eager to hear alternate viewpoints, such as yours.I think I process information in real time fairly well, however writing and listening at the same time is what gets me, and as someone said earlier, i've gotten into trouble by not taking notes. I've failed classes where I didn't listen to the lecture ...

It's funny you say that. I can go through a test, get an A, and then not be able to tell you one question from that test 10 minutes later. If I really had to, I could remember an image of that page of notes and recite from that, the factoid you want to know. But as far as knowing it as more than a mental image, chances are about 50/50.

If they are too lazy to take notes, chances are that they are too lazy to go back and listen to the recordings they made. That being said, I would rather have them recording me by pressing one button than typing on a keyboard during the entire class.

kriegfusion:I simply feel that nearly everything is worth writing down, because I find teachers, and lectures, immensely interesting. I simply feel robbed and cheated when I have to write so much, and can't enjoy the lecturer, I guess is what it comes down to.

Well then, I appreciate your devotion (and the good nature in which you accepted my rebuke), but I still think that you will, in time, learn to sort through what is, and what isn't, essential. In a well-prepared lecture, this will be easier to do, in a rambling ill-prepared lecture, this may be nearly impossible.

Perhaps you might try making just the absolute minimal notes during the lecture, and then try to improve upon them afterwards. In this way, you will still be able to "enjoy the lecture", but you will hopefully be keeping a reminder for the future. One caveat----in my opinion, there is a difference between active and passive listening, and if you are enjoying the lecture and "understanding it while it goes on, but not able to recall it immediately afterwards", then you have merely passively attended the lecture, and likely have not learned anything. The act of trying to take notes, however minimal, can make that process active, and it will be even easier for you to recall things afterwards. Try it, what have you got to lose? Best of luck :)

Je5tEr:So because someone doesn't have an eidetic memory you are going to arbitrarily restrict their ability to accurately reference what was said in a lecture. I don't know about you but when I turn my attention to taking notes I invariably miss other content in the lecture due to the interruption in focus.

I swear teachers these days are idiots.

B-b-b-b-but it's all about the kids!! The most important thing is that they are properly educated! Oh, no wait, scratch that. It's to make paranoid teachers feel better.